The “Weekly” Blab
Volume 16, Issue 4: March 8, 2023
The Long and Winding Road
I was in Florida doing alumni visits the week of February 20-24, so here’s a brief report. Geoffrey VanderWoude, Director of Development and Planned Giving from our Foundation picked me up at my house and off we went to Syracuse’s airport. The flight to New York City went well, and we actually got there about half an hour early, which meant we had to sit on the plane for 15 minutes until a someone could be found to connect the jetway to our plane. The flight from NYC to Fort Lauderdale also was fine, though like all flights these days, fully booked. We got to Fort Lauderdale a little early too and had to wait a few minutes for a gate to open. There were a few complications with the rental car that I won’t go into, and we went to an Indian restaurant that was nearby for dinner and checked into our hotel.
It’s always great to see our alumni and hear a bit about their successes and how SUNY Canton played a role. Most of the alumni I see are also regular donors to the College, whose contributions have assisted many students in multiple ways. The ones I saw on this trip were all folks I’d met before, so it was nice to see them again.
First up was a lunch meeting with Ron Blanchard, Glenn Goodelle, and Sue Goodelle, all from the class of ’68. We ate at a very nice restaurant in Coconut Creek called Truli Italian Food & Drink, where the food was delicious, and the portions were huge. Lunch on Wednesday was at the same restaurant with Doug Zeif (’2013), the owner of Truli, who was surprised to hear that we had eaten there the day before! Doug worked with Prof. Charles Fenner on this year’s Roopreneur competition, and generously co-sponsored it with our Foundation.
From Fort Lauderdale, we drove down to Miami to visit with Ron Blanchard once again. Ron is a fellow music lover and has an impressive stereo setup at his home in Coconut Grove that I enjoy listening to and drooling over. He is a vinyl lover and has an extensive record collection, but like me, also sings the praises of super-audio CDs. After a listening session, we went to dinner at an outdoor restaurant that had a jazz ensemble playing during dinner.
On Thursday morning, we drove to Florida’s west coast to see Don (’72) and Jamie Garrett. Don is in the construction game, building country clubs all around the state. We had lunch at the club in Naples which he built and caught up on what was new at the College and with his endeavors. The Garretts are strong supporters of our engineering and construction programs.
On Friday, our flight back north was scheduled to leave at 6:30 AM, which meant that we had to leave the hotel by 4:00 AM. Once again the plane was totally full and just as we prepared to move from the gate, the pilot announced that one of the engines wouldn’t start and this was the first time in his 17 years of service that had ever happened. We got off the plane and were told that they needed to fly a part in from Detroit, so the flight wouldn’t leave until after noon, which would make us miss our connection in Atlanta to Syracuse. We scrambled to get onto a flight on another airline and then from another airport for a few hours, but nothing was available—all flights were sold out. We finally left at 12:30 on our original flight—six hours late.
After landing in Atlanta at 2:30, we saw there was a flight to Syracuse leaving at 4 PM, so we dashed over to its terminal and gate, only to find that it was overbooked. After telling our tale of woe to the gate agent, we decided to wait and hope for the best about getting on the flight. We were lucky and did. My seat was literally being in the middle of the last row, and when I got there a high-school aged girl was sitting in it, who had traded places from her aisle seat in the previous row to be with her friends. I gladly exchanged for her original seat, and found myself next to two high school students from Watertown, one of whom will likely come to SUNY Canton in the Fall majoring in Vet Tech, who was surprised to find out I was the president there. We landed in Syracuse at 6 PM and back to Canton at about 9:30, with a brief stop at Chick-fil-a in Cicero, exhausted but glad to be home.
My Meeting with Shirley Chisholm
In the previous issue of the BLAB, I talked about some experiences I had in elementary and high school with learning about history in a way that left many important things out. I just read an article in the Chronicle titled “Where Rich Students are Told ‘You Deserve This’” by Evan Mandery, a professor at CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which brought an early college memory of mine to mind, that also deals with important things left out.
Toward the end of my junior year at Nottingham High School in Syracuse, I realized that I had taken all the courses and had all the credits I needed to graduate. In March or April, I decided I would graduate early. I hadn’t applied anywhere, so after making a few quick visits to local colleges, I was accepted at SUNY Oneonta and went there for one semester—the Fall of 1972. It was there that I met Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, who was speaking on campus.
Congresswoman Chisholm was the first Black woman to be elected to congress and the first Black person to run for president on a major party ticket. She announced her candidacy for president in January of 1972. She wasn’t really seen as having much of a chance to win the nomination, but she got 152 first-ballot votes at the national Democratic Party convention, ultimately losing to George McGovern. I decided to attend the talk, and if I remember correctly, there weren’t that many people in attendance—maybe somewhere between 30 and 50. She encouraged students to vote and talked about her experiences on the campaign trail and her political positions. After the talk ended, she stayed around for an additional hour or so and I had a chance to ask some questions and engage with her.
One of the things that congresswoman Chisholm had spoken about was her support for affirmative action—a phrase that was fairly new at the time, being first coined in 1961 in an executive order by President Kennedy, instructing federal contractors to treat all job applicants equally with regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Affirmative action had shown up frequently in the news in the later 1960s and early 1970s in a couple of different contexts, one of which was college admissions. Arguments often focused on the issue of quotas—namely, would affirmative action mean that a certain percentage of jobs or seats at colleges would be “reserved” for various groups? Then, as now, there was a lot of pushback on whether it was a good idea, with those against it usually arguing for meritocracy—that the most qualified person should get the job or college seat, regardless of what group they were in.
Please take my memories of the following with a grain of salt and a slice of sympathy, since this was 51 years ago and I was only 17 at the time, but I’m pretty sure that I told her that I was against affirmative action and argued that meritocracy would be better. I’m positive that she had heard that argument at least a thousand times before, so I have to admire her patience in dealing with me at that moment. Much to my surprise, congresswoman Chisholm was interested in my opinion and wanted to know why I felt that way, so we talked about it for 10-15 minutes.
My argument was that affirmative action was unfair because it would result in quotas, and if the quota for Black students was 15% and there were 100 seats, what would happen to a 16th Black student if they were the most qualified? Wouldn’t the 15 who got in under a quota also be stigmatized by people who felt they hadn’t earned their place? Why shouldn’t the seat go to the most qualified person—after all (in my view) they had earned it.
Congresswoman Chisholm smiled and said that it wasn’t so straightforward to identify who was “most qualified”. The concept depends on more than just grades—it also depends on opportunity, and one’s opportunities depend on one’s wealth, race, color, religion, sex, national origin, and many other things. True merit, she argued, was what one does with one’s skills and efforts relative to the opportunities one has—some people have an easier path to success than others.
My 17-year-old self had never heard this line of argument before, and it stopped me in my tracks. After a pause, I asked: “Then how do you choose?” She answered something like: “It isn’t easy. Just remember, there’s more to merit than just your grades. You have to look at the whole person and what they have had to overcome.” I thanked he for talking to me, she hugged me, and left a little while later.
The article I read today, 51 years later, talks about the same exact thing. So many people believe (and are told) that their accomplishments are all due to their hard work, and they therefore deserve what they have. They take offense at people arguing otherwise, acting like accomplishment is a unitary thing. There’s no doubt that your odds of being successful are enhanced by hard work and talent, but there’s also no doubt that not everyone is given an equal chance for success, often for reasons they have no control over. There are several catch-phrases for the idea that a person’s success depends on more than their work and talent, with two of the more common ones being “you didn’t build that” and “check your privilege”, both of which have been criticized by people who believe in merItocracy.
The criticism to both employs the common tactic of misrepresenting what is being said. The phrase “you didn’t build that” came from President Obama’s 2012 election campaign, where he said “Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.” His obvious point was that it took more than your hard work and talent to succeed—it also took the investments in infrastructure that have been made in this country, as well as the laws that allow businesses to have a reasonable chance to compete and succeed. He was saying that you owe the country and its people a little something too—you don’t deserve it all.
Similarly, if someone tells you to “check your privilege”, they’re not saying you’re only successful because some aspect of your background is privileged—they’re only saying that your background didn’t hinder your success as much as others’ has, often through no fault of their own, and maybe you should use a little of your success to provide opportunities for others who weren’t as fortunate as you. Not everyone who has earned success actually gets success.
Fifty-one years late, I’d like to thank Shirley Chisholm for her patience and wisdom, helping me see beyond my own privilege and urging me to use it to help others succeed.
Last Time’s Trivia Challenge
Last time’s trivia challenge had to do with the word “king”. Winners (and it was a long time ago!) include Kelly Peterson, Carmela Young, Julie Cruikshank, Betsy Adams, and Christina Lesyk. A CD awaits your coming to my office on the 6th floor of MacArthur Hall.
Here are the correct answers:
- Egyptian boy ruler who was buried with lots of jewelry and gold. King Tut.
- Greatest of all blues singers. His guitar is named Lucille. B.B. King.
- Ruler of the Knights of the Round Table. King Arthur.
- Christmas carol taking place at the Feast of Stephen. Good King Wenceslas.
- King who was the world’s longest waiting heir apparent—becoming king at the age of 73. King Charles III—the current king of Great Britain.
This Time’s Trivia Challenge
In the interests of equal time to last time’s trivia contest, this one focuses on the word “queen”. The first five entries with the most correct answers win a CD from the vast Szafran repository, as well as the admiration of their peers. No looking up the answers now!
SEND ALL ENTRIES BY EMAIL to answers@canton.edu since if you put them as a response on the BLOG, everyone will be able to see them.
- In the English poem and nursery rhyme, she made some tarts.
- Freddie Mercury, Brian May, and Roger Taylor.
- She financed Columbus’ voyage to America.
- American rap singer, she’s won a Grammy, Emmy, Golden Globe, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, two NAACP Image Awards, and was the first hip-hop artist to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
- Excellent TV mini-series about Beth Harmon’s quest to become the greatest chess player in the world.
The Weekly Blab 